Elevator7009

It might also just be that the person asking you just always asks.

did I pass and you just ask everyone this because not everyone conforms to the gender binary?”

… I already brought up that possibility :(

Not conservative.

I’ve gotten very very used to being asked for titles on forms and the like. I’ve gotten used to respecting other peoples’ pronouns.

I have not gotten used to being asked for my own, and I don’t like it.

I understand that you can look just like me while having a gender identity that does not match my own—some men like to present in a feminine manner sometimes while still being men, and some people are non-binary, third gender, agender, etc. but might still dress in a very feminine way for whatever reason. To cover all your bases, ask pronouns, because guessing “she/her” at a feminine presentation in a body with a feminine shape won’t always be right. If you want to maximize your chances of being correct, you need to ask.

But whenever I’m asked, I also wonder if I’ve presented in a way that signals anything other than “woman” (which frequently but does not always line up with feminine presentations from feminine bodies). Did I just totally fail at presenting the way I want to and if forced to assume you’d guess I’m third gender, or are you being inclusive and considering that people who present like me aren’t always women? It’s the privileged, cis-woman version of “did you have to ask because I failed hard at passing, or did I pass and you just ask everyone this because not everyone conforms to the gender binary?” I’m really used to my gender being assumed and assumed correctly, and am not comfortable with people being unsure or even assuming wrong. I’m basically getting a microdose of what many non-cis, non-binary, and/or nongenderconforming people have to deal with, and I don’t like it.

I also understand it is probably for the benefit of most people (I’m aware of some non-cis people also disliking people asking pronouns, with reasons being along the lines of “please assume, I’m a binary trans person and asking makes me worry I don’t pass” or “I’m in the closet right now and asking my pronouns makes me choose between outing myself and misgendering myself” and it’s worth finding some solution for this) for asking to be normalized, so I let my personal discomfort and dislike go. After I ask if they asked pronouns because they honestly thought it’s super likely I don’t use she/her in which case oh god what do I change so I can make the assumption be that I use she/her, or if it’s just them trying to be inclusive and cover all bases which is good and respectable.

I definitely haven’t seen questions like this asked at all, let alone repeatedly, which is probably where part of my patience comes from.

wait, why is everyone so interested in everything I do all of a sudden? Why is every corporation suddenly collecting all my data and giving me free stuff in return while raking in billions of profits? Hm, sus

This never occurred to me. I found articles about privacy and the risks that were out there as a young child, way before I noticed any kind of change in levels of privacy (didn’t notice any change myself). As a kid I wasn’t aware that certain corporations were making billions, I just enjoyed the free ride and then saw all the articles about privacy risks. And nothing bad ever happened to me and I didn’t see articles about bad things happening to people, so I still didn’t care (after all, I was on Android, I could just… deny this app permission to access something, problem solved! At least that is what I thought) until I saw someone get doxxed. I’m 18+ now, but sometimes you have kids online who don’t obviously seem like kids because you can’t see them online, and thEy Arent TypIng l11k3 dis!!! or making constant baysic english lenguige missteaks but use regular English at the same level of fluency as adults. If you transplanted my 10-year old personality into a 10-year old today I could easily see them getting on the Fediverse and passing for an adult for awhile, because my 10-year old self spoke and wrote basically the same way I do now, minus the swear words and life experience.

And also, the fact is most people just don’t care about stuff until it affects them or someone close to them. It sounds nasty and I want to be better than this, but the fact remains we all have a limited amount of care and energy to go around. I mostly try to fix my own issues, not exacerbate anyone or dismiss anyone else’s, and help out where I can.

I’d imagine if you’re not in tech circles you also don’t find out much about privacy risks. I really try to extend the benefit of the doubt to people, give a way they could reasonably not know things, because I know I’m arrogant and want to counteract my own “oh my god how do you not know that you fucking idiot lmao I’m so much better and smarter than you” tendencies. And I truly cannot know what things are actually like outside of my experience, at most I can just read about them and get some idea.

Once I wondered why everyone cared so much about something I didn’t. I wanted to give what seemed like most of the world the benefit of the doubt instead of dismissing their care as invalid and stupid, so I sat and thought about it and came up with a guess.

My guess was way off base. It correctly explained some tertiary aspects of why people cared, but totally missed the primary reasons. And until I had it explained to me, I probably would have continued to miss the primary reasons for my entire life. Sometimes it’s useful to get the answer from the horse’s mouth instead of guessing on your own.

But I definitely understand the bit about people getting upset when the things they care about are invalidated. One of my Things is people just assuming the best of each other or at least not namecalling each other when assuming the best is foolish or impractical, so I reacted to your comment and wondered if I should have because half the time I get a nice exchange like this one we’re having, and half the time I get some condescending, snarky replies. And the condescending replies feel very bad.

I totally get your point about the vegetarian forum and agree with you, but this is c/asklemmy, not c/privacy. I’ve been around the Fediverse long enough to know it’s generally a pro-privacy environment, not everyone else has been.

Again, I’m really not seeing the “I don’t see why anyone else should” part in their question, I suppose we’re interpreting it differently.

As another user said, it’s good to ask these questions. We shouldn’t shame people for asking. I’d rather ask a question and look stupid for needing to ask it once, than be ignorant forever. Could they have just searched “why should I care about privacy” online and gotten tons of answers? Yes. I’d also imagine that not everyone grew up with the norm of exhausting all other avenues of information before you ask other people for help.

As for how they asked the question, I’m just reading it as them saying they don’t care about privacy, not that we’re all idiot twats for caring. I think it’s an honest question, not a disingenuous “why does anyone care, you shouldn’t and you’re all stupid if you do.”

I’m cool with telling people in real life almost anything about me sans my SSN and passwords. I don’t consider any of it personal and have probably too much trust in random strangers.

I still recognize others might not be like me, and don’t shame them for their choice to not share details they consider personal. Even if it’s something like what their favorite food is. A little weird in my opinion, but I’m still not entitled to that information.

I’m also aware of how people can use information against you. I trust you not to go trying to commit identity theft with my birthday and SSN and real name, but a bad actor scraping the web for SSNs totally will. So I have to hide some things. I’m definitely not ashamed I was born on DD-MM-YYYY with the name Firstname Lastname and assigned the SSN 000-00-0000, but I also know people will use this combination of information in order to harm me. Is their intent to hurt me specifically? Probably not, they just want to spend money that is not theirs. Will I get hurt anyways? Yes. And if I’m not careful about it, a lot of other information about me (like my hobbies, the way I type, etc.) can be used to link my online identities together and eventually find one of them that tells you I am Firstname Lastname, and a different online identity that tells you I was born DD-MM-YYYY (I should probably go scrub my birthday off everything). This, even without the SSN, is enough to get you trusted as being me for a lot of things, like when you call into a pharmacy. And I ask the customer service person to pass on my complaint about that about 10% of the times I call into such places where the security should probably be tighter. My SSN might be harder to find because I don’t talk about what it is, but I hear they get bought and sold online pretty often. Some website that did need my SSN gets hacked, and now that’d be ripe for the taking too.

I probably should care about what big companies are doing with my data, but honestly I feel I’ll just be one more person in a group of a million. Companies won’t care.

What I’m scared of is stuff like the example above. A dedicated person trying to connect my online identity to my real-life one.

I’ve never liked that at all.

I’m not exactly rich, but compared to some starving people in third-world countries yes I am.

I hate to think that because I have it worlds better than them by an accident of birth, I must be stupid and deserve every bad thing that happened to me. After all, I’m just an overprivileged first-worlder, therefore I purposely tried to step on everyone to get my way. Because you suffered in ways that I never have, I must suffer like that and you get to laugh at the “rich person” flailing and generally being miserable. I wasn’t born into poverty, therefore if I experience misfortune I clearly deserve it somehow. If I happen to catch cancer, well, everyone dies someday, should have gotten used to the concept of unexpectedly dying by disease like us real folk, cry harder you privileged bitch, nobody cares and nobody should. That’s just what you get for being out of touch with how real people live. Should have been prepared for that.

This is why I stick to /sub. To avoid this kind of post. And I somehow find these posts anyway (didn’t even seek out stuff outside of /sub, not sure how I landed here, going to find out how it happened so it won’t happen again) and get angry.

Lovely outrage bait. Never change, internet.

Was looking for a smaller kbin instance to help out with decentralization, saw an ad for kbin.cafe and signed up

I am on kbin, and I can see this post.